The Contest: Ready for another architecture contest! This one will be unofficial since the voting will be a bit unusual (see below). I got this idea from the frequent commenting in chat that some of the contest entries in recent contests have been brutally hard. Interestingly, I often find that it's more difficult to come up with a hold that's a medium difficulty level but still fun. So the gist of this contest is that you will be making a smallish hold (Lets say 5 to 15 puzzle rooms) with the goal of making it rate at exactly the five brain difficulty level. Just about anything goes as long as you can make it about 5 brains and fun.

Now what exactly defines a five brain difficulty level you may ask. That's part of the fun. Historically five brains was pegged to about the level of difficulty of KDD, but most agree that's not actually the case anymore. Folks will probably have very different takes on what level of difficulty the hold you submit is. I do expect the voting to be pretty similar to the difficulty level votes you see for published holds though, since it will most likely be the same people voting in this contest who rate those holds. So you can try to use ratings for recently published holds as a guide. Most of all, this will be a good opportunity for you, dear contestant, to get some solid feedback on just how well calibrated your difficulty scale is for your own architecture. Think of it as a terrific learning opportunity.

The Rules:
1) Each entry should contain somewhere from 5 to 15 puzzle rooms on one level and have a set of exit stairs that is NOT blocked by blue doors. The compilation will use a map so you can put in a second set of stairs with a blue door if you want to but it's unnecessary. You can have any additional number of non-puzzle rooms.

3) Level Name and hold name should be the same so that I know what to call it in the compilation. If they happen to differ, I'll just name your entry "This architect couldn't follow the rules"

4) Up to three entries per architect.

5) Custom media (as long as not copyrighted) is okay. As are custom elements, though keep in mind that custom elements tend to add quite a bit to the difficulty level just by the fact that the player will need to figure them out.

The Vote: As mentioned above, voting will be a little bit weird. You'll voting twice for each entry. Once for the perceived difficulty level (in terms of brains) and once for the overall quality. Most of the weight will be on difficulty level, and the "quality" scale will be used for tie breaking only. Average difficulty will be rounded to the nearest whole brain for voting though, so a hold that averages 4.5 brains and a hold that averages 4.9 brains would both be considered tied for difficulty at 5 brains and the one with the higher quality vote would win out. The idea is that you should be focusing your efforts on making a 5 brain hold, but in the back of your mind, remember to make it fun too!

The Deadline: Three weeks sounds good for an architecture contest. So entries will be due Local Time:04-02-2017 at 07:00 PM so you have negative 165 weeks, 6 days left. Submit entries to The Submissions threadUPDATE: Deadline has changed to the 29th by request. UPDATE: Deadline has changed again to the 2nd of April.

The Prizes: Since this is an unofficial contest the prizes selection is a bit smaller than usual. Schik's letting me donate my prize from the December contest to the winners of this one, so let's say 50 rank points for the first place winner, 30 for second, and 20 for third.

____________________________
Links to neat forum tools that I always have trouble finding:

For those interested, I just searched through the holds by difficulty and found four holds that may be helpful for judging how difficult your hold is:

A Journey Through Time
King Azb's Dungeon
Like Grains in an Hourglass
Mini Mimicry

These four holds all had relatively high enjoyment ratings, received a 5-brain rating for difficulty, and came out within the past few years.

That last point was important to me, since I believe that this community has been undergoing "difficulty inflation" and older holds are comparatively easier than their ratings would suggest. Also, the people that would have rated holds that recently came out are likely the same people who will be judging your contest entries.

I don't know which of the voting threads to mention this in, so I'll mention it here.

The compilation has a glitch. I grabbed one of the custom weapons from the one entry with the custom elements in the entrance room, and when I exit the stairs back to the map with one of the weapons, I'm left with no weapon in another entry.

Glitch confirmed. There is a non-restore workaround: If you go back to the custom weapons level and take a custom weapon, then take back your sword from the same token space, it rearms Beethro and everything's back to normal.